Observations focused on the problems of an underdeveloped country, Venezuela, with some serendipity about the world (orchids, techs, science, investments, politics) at large. A famous Venezuelan, Juan Pablo Perez Alfonzo, referred to oil as the devil's excrement. For countries, easy wealth appears indeed to be the sure path to failure. Venezuela might be a clear example of that.

Archive for December 10th, 2011

The picture above is that of the fire set last night by Chavista hordes at Univerdad Central’s Aula Magna, a magnificent concert hall/auditorium, designed by Carlos Raul Villanueva and whose acoustics were fixed by Alexander Calder. A picture of the concert hall is shown below:

As votes were being counted for the election of Student Union President and other positions, more than 40 motorcyclists, their heads covered, invaded the university shouting “Castro-Communist Chavista Hordes” trying to disrupt the counting and burn the electoral material. They had incendiary bomb and tear gas canisters (wonder how they get them?) which they used to disrupt the process and scatter people away from the university.

Their problem? That once again Chavista forces not only lost a student election, but the Chavista candidate, Kevin Avila, received less than one out of each fifteen votes, as the three opposition slates received over 7,700 votes to Avils’a 500. Fortunately the data was preserved and the votes had been counted when this happened.

Kevin Avila is a Chavista student leader which was expelled from the University for violent behavior against the President of the university, but was quickly reinstated by the Venezuelan Supreme Court in one of those flash rulings that only those that support Chavez receive.

The total rejection of Chavismo by students and the fact that more than 50% of the students showed up to vote, despite threats of violence by the Chavistas to scare away the vote, was too much for Avila and his fascist comrades, as they roamed the university at will without any sign of security forces near the university attempting to detain them as they came out (The University is autonomous and the police does no enter its campus, but there are only well-defined narrow entranecs that can be controlled by security)

Is this is a sign of what we will see in 2012? Is this how Chavismo will act when and if it loses the Presidential election in 2012? That is the scary part. As Chavez spoke to the radio last night, claiming to be fine and jogging, these barbarians were trying to burn down Universidad Central de Venezuela, one of the leading educational centers of the country, which ironically nurtured most of the university graduates in Chavez’ Cabinet and where Giordani, Merentes and Navarro worked all their lives. Shame on them and on the Government for allowing this to happen. But more importantly, shame of them for staying silent in the face of the type of fascism that they claimed to ahev spent their lives fighting.